I'm in a similar position to Patrick, so I feel semi-qualified to answer -- not in his place, but as someone who's gone through the same thing.
I lived way out in the sticks, in a village with one convenience store, no train station, one bus stop, and a grocery store 30 minutes down the mountain.
Life there was simple and great; I enjoyed my job, the stress was low, rent was low.
I moved to Tokyo in search of better opportunities, which I found. Stress was high and I reacted by eating too much; as a result, I'm about 40 kg heavier than I was in my old location. Additionally, the stress has taken its toll on my sleep quality, my finances, and my health in general. Among other things, people remark that I lose my temper far more easily now than before and also that I seem much more moody than before; I'm also on antidepressants now.
Despite all of that, Tokyo is a wonderful city and I love it a lot. The job, stress (and related health issues), and finances completely aside, Tokyo is an amazing place to live. If you think of any given locale as having X number of doors in any given category (food, shopping, opportunities to meet people, business opportunities, etc.), then my old location had perhaps 5. Tokyo offers literally millions upon millions. It's a megacity and perhaps quite unique in its density and variety of neighborhoods, all of which contribute to an opportunity to live a really interesting, varied, and international life in one place.
While I could transfer my dislike for my current environment at work to Tokyo itself, I think it would be unfair to do so; as unfair as it would be to transfer my like for the life/work I had in my old location to the location itself.
But Patrick previously wrote about how he loved Ogaki, and was in Japan because Ogaki was there.
So it might well have made a mistake inflating lifestyle while cutting consulting AND before any of the businesses were "done".
I have the good fortune of being in a low cost of living city that's also a real, wonderful city: Montreal. Excellent place to start and scale a solopreneur business.
Currently scaling up my business processes (accounting, support, etc.) which increases business costs. I'd be very wary of moving anywhere more expensive until I've increased revenue to match. (This shouldn't be a problem – outsourcing the backend processes will let me move on several revenue generating projects I've been deferring while dealing with a backlog of administrative stuff)
Tokyo is consistently ranked as one of the best cities to travel to or live in, in the world. I visited Tokyo recently, and found it to be exceptional in many ways. Aside from Patrick, I've never heard of Ogaki and I suspect most people wouldn't have either. Imagine the best of New York, San Francisco, etc. combined in an even larger city that is extremely clean, polite, hard working, and efficient.
1) "Tokyo is a wonderful city and I love it a lot – enough to not regret the rent"
2) "the balance in my Excel file went progressively negative. This was expected, but caused me a bit of stress."
Ogaki is a city where Patrick successfully launched his first startup - Bingo Card Creator.
Patrick met his wife in Ogaki.
Then McKenzie family moved to Tokyo, which "helped" Patrick:
- to fail at his another startup - Starfighter and converted him from entrepreneur to an employee;
- "not felt as effective as a husband / father";
- to accumulate "health debt".
What is so "wonderful" about Tokyo and what is there "to love"?